


Like Smoke

by adamantlysoft



Category: Eddsworld - All Media Types
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Devil!Tord au, M/M, Multi, Polyamory, Reincarnation AU, Slow Burn, this may have nsfw in later chapters, will update the rating accordingly
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-02-14
Updated: 2020-05-04
Packaged: 2021-02-19 14:49:43
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,272
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22712515
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/adamantlysoft/pseuds/adamantlysoft
Summary: Nothing in Tord's life could ever be easy. For everything that he's accomplished, he's sacrificed just as much. Losing contact with friends to go to college, cutting ties with his family to move out into the world, even losing the love of his life as he drowned himself in his work. He could convince himself, no matter what, that it would all be worth it in the end.And then the end came. It came for him as it comes for most - abrupt and insignificant. Tord's life ends with no fanfare, unseen and unsung.But as luck would have it for Tord, sometimes the end is only the beginning.
Relationships: Edd/Matt (Eddsworld), Edd/Matt/Tom/Tord (Eddsworld), Edd/Tom (Eddsworld), Jon/Todd (Eddsworld), Matt/Tord (Eddsworld), Patryck/Paul (Eddsworld), Todd/Tord (Eddsworld), Tom/Tord (Eddsworld)
Comments: 7
Kudos: 36





	1. Dancing with the Devil under the pale fluorescent lights

Tord didn’t expect his legacy to end like this.

He probably should have, if he were being honest with himself. What kind of headstrong fool believes that they can take over the world with an army of a few hundred? This wasn’t ancient times, he wasn’t a viking or god or savior of the people. Tord was just one small man with a short burst of significance in this fucked up world. That’s all anyone can hope for, really.

And now, as Tord feels the heat of his body seep out of his wounds into the muddy trench below, he knows with that same level of confidence that started his army that this significance was going to die with him. Tord hadn’t bothered sitting up to assess his injuries - hell, he wasn’t even sure if he  _ could  _ \- but you don’t have to be a genius to tell that a sword to the gut was going to cause some pretty bad damage.  _ What kind of modern-age soldier carries around a sword?  _ Tord lets out a breath of a laugh at that - losing to a man that brought a knife to a gunfight. What a disgrace. 

A voice at the forefront of Tord’s brain, his logic and instinct for survival, urged him to seek help. He could probably move his arm to the radio at his belt, Patryck stayed at the base in case of an emergency, even if no one else survived he would be able to hear Tord. Nevertheless, Tord stayed motionless on the ground, eyes half open now as the darkness started to creep in. He was so cold, and so numb. He never thought that things would end this way. And as Tord breathed out what he knew was his final breath, the last few dying synapses of his brain produced a single thought:

_ “I could’ve done so much more.” _

In what feels like an instant after that thought crosses his brain, Tord feels something  _ excruciating -  _ as though all of the pain from his life had come back upon him tenfold, stabbing through his gut and chest and throat in ways no weapon could ever pierce him. Before he even had the capacity to open his eyes he could hear screaming; from himself, from below, from all around him, inhuman and  _ terrifying. _ As he opened his eyes Tord could see his body,  _ his corpse, _ lying in tatters on his final battlefield, and as he was dragged through the mud and rocks and blood and worms of the Earth down below by a force he could not see and could not comprehend, his mind drowned in panicked thought after panicked thought of what was about to come. Judgement, darkness, pain, punishment, death,  _ Hellfire, eternity,  _ **_damnation._ **

Tord didn’t expect his back to hit linoleum.

* * *

“You’ve been real busy, haven’t you, Tord?”

Tord sat up slowly, still processing the jolt between death and falling and...now this. He doesn’t recognize the voice speaking to him, and when he stands up - somehow his body is intact here - he doesn’t see anyone else in the room that might’ve said it. Confusion and caution spread across Tord’s face, clutching at his stomach and standing in the dead center of the room to scan it. It looks just like…a normal office, like he’s been whisked away from the battlefield and tucked into some lifeless pencil pushing cubicle in a multilevel building in some insignificant town somewhere. Surely this _is_ hell, then. But what was with the voice?...  
  
“Now c’mon, don’t keep me waiting. We got a _lot_ to discuss and only eternity to do it!”  
  
Tord turns around sharply at the voice suddenly behind him, and leaps back with a startled yell as he sees a man sitting at the desk in front of him who was **absolutely** not there before. He’s tall, average weight and tanned skin, with a prominent hawkish nose and tired but humored eyes. His hair is a pale, almost mousy brown, overgrown and cascading down his neck and around his shoulders, and when its paired with the baggy plaid overshirt, black tee underneath and rose tinted round glasses, Tord’s not really sure _what_ to think.

“I’m…sorry.  _ Who _ the fuck are you?”

The man at the desk gives him a crooked grin, but there’s no malicious intent behind it. It feels more like the smile you would give someone when they’ve unwittingly fallen for your set-up to a joke. He leans back in his chair and folds his hands behind his head, shrugging nonchalantly.   
  
“You can call me Todd. Nice to meetcha, Tord. Take a seat!”   
  
He offers no hand to shake. It doesn’t occur to Tord that this man he’s never met before shouldn’t know his name, his mind instead focusing on the extreme similarity between the man’s name and his own. Perhaps it’s a fake name?

Tord’s suspicion regarding what’s going on only increases further and further the longer he’s in this room, but he makes no move to act on it - for now. Instead, he pulls the chair away from the front of the desk - which was also certainly not there before - and sits down opposite of Todd. He leans forward on the desk a bit, arms folded neatly upon one another, and examines Todd once again before looking around the desk. It’s  _ covered _ in paperwork, stacks that stretch up multiple feet in the air of messily organized folders with brightly colored tabs and loose-leaf pages jutting out randomly from in between. Tord knows from experience that running a business involves a lot of paperwork, but this much is ridiculous! What position could this weird man have that involves this much work?   
  
And more importantly….why is he taking the time off from working on it to talk to  _ him? _

He looks back at Todd’s face, now mostly confused. “Todd, yes, fantastic, a pleasure to meet you. I’d like to circle back to the “Who the fuck are you” question I asked earlier, if you don’t mind. I was  _ kind of  _ expecting more than a name.”

Todd’s grin grows and he lets out a small laugh, which makes Tord tense. He’s very quickly deciding that he doesn’t like this man.

“Ah, don’t worry about it man, you’ll find out soon enough. I’m trying to focus more on you right now. You’ve been really busy up there, haven’t you?”   
  
He stands up abruptly from the desk then, muttering something about finding Tord’s file as he starts leafing through the countless files on his desk. Tord lets out an incredulous breath of a laugh, watching him make even more of a mess of his desk.   
  


“You have  _ got _ to be kidding me. You’re not going to find anything in all of that! And what do you mean, “up there”, up  _ whe _ -”

Tord’s words die in his throat as he watches Todd, who has flown up from the floor rather unceremoniously. He starts floating an easy three feet above the desk, looking through the files on top of the stacks as he lets out a tuneless hum, still smiling.

“Ah ha! Here we go - Tord Krogstad. Cool last name, gotta be honest. Makes me wish I had one. So you’re Norwegian?”   
  
He floats back down to sit in his chair as he speaks, looking up at Tord expectantly at the end, waiting for an answer. Tord’s face is blank and pale, mouth open aghast but refusing to let out any words. Todd simply shrugs and opens up the file, skimming through the pages.   
  
“No need to answer - I already know. I know everything about you, Tord! Your rough businessman father, your absentee mother who ran off when you were 5 to live in America - massive downgrade by the way - your pen pal in the UK that ended up being your first and best friend! Found that awfully sweet, he still thinks about you from time to time, you know. Then you got your high school and college years, living off of that family wealth but trying to cut off contact, going into engineering! You could’ve gone into architecture or robotics, maybe even computer programming. With your grades and that massive amount of determination and skill, you could have easily changed the world. But you never liked doing things the easy way, did you? You went off and formed an army, fresh out of college and filled up with dreams of change and revolution. I gotta admit…you got a lot farther than I thought you would.”

It takes Tord longer than he’d like to admit to realize that Todd had stopped talking, and is now looking up at him with an amused grin. He lets go of the desk, unaware up until now that he had been gripping it with all of his might, and scoots back a bit in his chair to look at Todd in fear. He doesn’t need to ask who Todd is anymore, or where he is. He realized halfway through Todd’s summary of his own life. There’s only one question that he can think is worth asking now.

“...What are you going to do to me?”

Todd’s grin widens exponentially at that, his head lowering just enough for a glint to catch on his glasses. He leans forward and places his elbows on the desk, chin resting on top of his hands, examining Tord now with a look of a man much more powerful than his appearance would insinuate.

“I’m going to give you a job offer.”


	2. The Devil wears blue jeans and Hell is an English labyrinth

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Todd tells Tord about the functions of Hell and it's inhabitants, and Tord gets thrown for loop after loop.

The next hour of Tord’s non-life is spent listening to Todd monologue about the functions of Hell, demons, and their jobs. Though Tord finds interest in how Hell works, he finds himself zoning out through most of the conversation, focusing on Todd instead. Over this hour, Tord learns several things about Todd:

  1. He’s wearing a human disguise - demonic forms aren't visible to humans and the most they can show are horns and a tail before mortal minds can’t process it.
  2. Like many tales about the Devil, Todd is charismatic, friendly, and enjoys all types of games.
  3. Unlike many tales about the Devil, Todd very rarely goes to Earth himself, and doesn’t like making deals with mortals - “until they die, it’s too much of a hassle to deal with.”
  4. He’s by far the most interesting person that Tord has ever met, and if he were a human, Tord would have shot him years ago.



Tord is halfway through debating how much trouble he’d get into for shooting the Devil himself when Todd snaps his fingers to get Tord’s attention, a crooked grin on his face as he raises an eyebrow.

“Hey, you with me? Come on dude, you gotta have an attention span better than mine, or this conversation ain’t going anywhere.”

Tord sighs and nods, pinching the bridge of his nose as he leans back in his chair.

“Sorry, it’s all a bit overwhelming…wait, did you...did you just say _“ain’t”?”_

Tord sits up in his chair once more as Todd chuckles, standing up then and walking around to Tord’s side of the desk.

“It’s slang from the United States. I don’t go up there, but I keep in touch with what’s going on. C’mon, maybe a change of scenery will help you absorb all of this a bit better.”

Todd has a smile on his face - it hasn’t left since Tord first saw him - but his tone doesn’t leave room for much argument as he nods towards a door. How does he keep shifting the environment without Tord noticing? And why can’t he just “change the scenery” to look like they’re outside? He ends up neglecting to voice these questions, though, just sighing and shifting to stand up and follow Todd out of the office.

The hallway that the door opens to is dark and cold, the light of the office only illuminating a small bit of the opposite wall before it gets engulfed in shadows. Todd holds the door open for Tord to walk through before following him, shutting the office door behind him. For only a moment, the two of them are standing in complete darkness, before Tord hears Todd snap. All at once, wall mounted candles light up one by one, filling up the house with light and warmth. 

Tord gasps in awe at the ornately decorated hallway, but he doesn’t get much time to admire it - Todd grabs onto Tord’s hand and gives him a wink before whisking him through the house at incredible speeds. They move through the hallways in a blur, Tord’s head whipping around this way and that as he tries to process it all. 13 doorways, 7 hallways, one of which Tord _swears_ went vertically, 6 stairwells, before Todd opens one last doorway and pulls Tord over the edge to a 4 story vertical drop into darkness. Tord yells in shock, closing his eyes -

“Aww, come on, Krogstad. Not gonna look around? I worked hard on this view.”

The rushing wind from the drop stops instantly once Todd speaks, and Tord opens his eyes, a bit confused. The two of them are standing on a small, stepping stone walkway, dark grass growing between the stones. As Tord looks to the end of the walkway, he lets out a choked noise of bewilderment when he sees it ends right at the base of a dark paneled door…on the side of a _mountain??_ A sheer rocky cliff looms hundreds of feet up into the air just ten feet to the right of where the two of them are standing, small shrubs and plant growth littering the crags above them. Tord doesn’t even bother trying to ask Todd for an explanation, he goes right over to the door and tries to open it - but the window in the door shows nothing but darkness inside, and the door is locked.

  
“Todd, what the _fuck._ You live in a _mountain?_ How did you lock the door without me noticing?? _Will you stop fucking with me??”_   
  


Tord turns away from the mountain then to look at Todd incredulously. He swears, if he weren’t about to pass out from shock, he would slap the grin off of that smug face.

“Mmm…..Kind of, that’s my own sexy little secret, and absolutely not. But I wasn’t talking about the mountain, I’m talking about _this_ view.”

As Tord walks back over to Todd, he puts an arm around Tord’s shoulders and turns him to look beyond the walkway. Tord is just about to shove Todd away from him before his eyes widen as he focuses on the landscape beyond the walkway, his anger fading.

Depictions of hell as pits of lava brimming with tortured souls and brimstone castles lit by fire seem archaic compared to what Tord sees. Enormous, twisting spirals dot the landscape, at least a dozen, stretching so far up that he can’t see the end of them. They’re speckled with dots of different colored lights, ladders and stairways melded into the spires on the sides connecting...holes? No, as he examines them closer, they’re _homes._ He can vaguely see figures inside of the homes, talking to each other, traversing the staircases. Some are even flying around outside the perimeter of them.

Below these strange spires, Tord can see what looks like a bustling town, almost unnerving with its commonplace appearance. It looks like a town he could see in England - wood and brick homes of gentle colors nestled against each other, lining winding streets and narrow walkways, where Tord can see more beings of different shapes and sizes walking around. Some of the buildings have smoke coming out of the chimneys, others have their windows open. For a moment, Tord has the thought that Todd is simply fucking with him again - that he actually _is_ looking at an English town, and the oddities he sees are merely illusions or something. But as he turns his gaze away from the town and towards the outskirts is where this suspicion ends.

The town...no, the entire _landscape_...it’s all tilted around the edges, curving upwards all around them like a fisheye lens. It’s not like they’re in a valley - the buildings, the trees, everything dotting the landscape - it tilts with the land, nearly going sideways before it exits Tord’s field of vision. The fog certainly doesn’t help that, either. It took Tord a moment of looking around to notice, but everywhere around them, the land is covered in a thin, warm, red fog. It gets thicker and more concentrated the farther out Tord looks, until it’s completely obscuring the tilted edges of his peripheral vision, and fading into purple as it ascends into the dark blue sky. He can’t even tell if it’s that color because it’s nighttime, or the fog...or even if he’s looking at a sky at all.

It’s all so...disorienting. And yet...it’s mystifying. Breathtaking.

“So, this is Hell. What do you think?”

_“...What a sight…”_

* * *

  
  


Todd ends up taking Tord on a walk through the town in the shadow of the mountain, passing by the many shops and the mass of people working in and visiting them. Tord uses the term “people” loosely in his mind; some of the beings they pass do indeed seem human, even if they float and get transparent around the edges. But some of the beings he passes are more...to put it simply, monstrous. He wouldn’t peg them all as demonic, per se, but they have unusual and startling features - fangs, horns, wings, extra eyes, extra arms, animal parts, some of them are even more animal than humanoid! Tord’s gaze locks on one of these beings in particular as the two of them pass it, a large quadruped with a human’s face but the body of a lion and wings, carefully holding a basket of flowers in its maw as it exits a flower shop and flies off.

“This place is surreal...are all of these people demons?”

“Nah, Hell’s not as exclusive as that. If only demons and souls stayed here, it’d be a _lot_ emptier. I let all kinds of creatures in, so long as they can be chill about it. They have homes, jobs, some of them stay here longer than they stay on Earth.”

“Wait...they can travel back and forth?”

Tord speeds up just slightly so he’s walking beside Todd instead of behind him, raising an eyebrow in curiosity as he turns to look at him.

“Well, yeah. Why would I trap _them_ here? The only ones that can’t leave are the souls, but that’s obvious. They have jobs and homes too, though. Kinda depends on what they’re here for, y’know? Not _everyone_ gets forced to work in sulfur mines or get...shoved underneath pits of lava, or whatever else humanity has imagined.”

“Wow...that’s...that’s pretty lenient. Are you sure you’re actually **_the_ ** Devil?”

“The one and only, baby. Why, you looking to replace me?”

Todd turns to grin and waggle his eyebrows at Tord, who lets out a groan and falls back to walking behind him, going back to people...er...being-watching.

“...A lot of the more...demonic looking folks look pretty similar. Is there a reason for that? And- why can I even see them in the first place? I thought you said it was “too much for mortal minds to comprehend” or whatever.”

“You’re not mortal anymore, now are you?”

Todd turns his head back to fix Tord with a gaze, laughing at Tord’s sour expression before facing forward again.

“There is a reason for that, though. Demons are divided into seven different subtypes, and the demons all in one subtype tend to look similar, the only differences resulting from personality stuff from their human life. And before you ask why it’s seven specifically, it’s because of the Seven Deadly Sins. You _do_ know what those are, right?~”

“Yes, I know what those are, I’m not _five,_ damn. That’s...interesting, though.”

With Tord’s new knowledge, he’s able to see more personalized touches to some of the demon’s forms as he passes them. Some are strong and intimidating, others are lithe and scurry through the crowds with a shifty look in their eyes. Tord’s able to spot one demon across the street who almost looks like they’re melted into the chair they’re sleeping in.

Todd had fallen back to Tord’s side, looking at him with a grin of amusement as he looked across all of the demons they passed. He clears his throat to get Tord’s attention.

“So...are you curious as to what Demon type you’ll be? If you accept the contract, of course.”

Tord purses his lips slightly in thought, before his face splits into a grin.

“Will I be a _Lu_ -”

Todd shuts Tord up before he can finish the sentence, pressing his hand up against Tord’s face playfully and biting back a laugh.

“No, you’re a bit _over_ -qualified, sadly. That’s the attitude that’s responsible for making you a Demon of Pride, though.”

“Haha, Pride, really?”

“Well, yeah. What other dominant Sin could be responsible for making such a headstrong fool that believed he could take over the world with an army of a few hundred?”

Tord’s smile is wiped off of his face then, shivering slightly at the nearly word for word repetition of his own dying thoughts. Can Todd...read minds? No, surely that was just a coincidence...but he can’t rule the possibility out. Todd is so unbelievably different from what he would expect the Devil to be. From his appearance, to his personality, to the way he’s shaped Hell and its laws...it’s all quite bewildering. It makes Tord wonder…

“...What will happen to me if I don’t accept the contract?”

“Having doubts, are we? Fair, fair. Let me think...you won’t be able to go back to Earth, obviously. You’ll be somewhere in Hell forever. Maybe...a janitor. Or the assistant manager of one of the local businesses. Something mildly infuriating, but not particularly agonizing. After all, you _did_ do quite a bit of damage while you were up there.”

“Then why are you giving me a chance at all?”

Todd seems surprised at this question, his eyes widening slightly behind his rose tinted glasses. He lets out a pleased hum, hooking his thumbs into his jean pockets - he can’t believe the Devil is wearing denim _jeans_ , of all things - as he nods towards a table. Tord takes the invitation silently, sitting across from Todd at the small rustic table outside of a store Tord doesn’t pay attention to.

“Haven’t had someone ask that in a while. You see...heaven...it really fuckin’ sucks. And I’m not just saying that because I got kicked out. For every being that dies, there’s a wide variety of possible afterlives that they can go to. Usually, it’s whatever domain that they believe in. Elysium, Nirvana, Valhalla...you get it. But if they don’t believe in anything in particular, it kinda defaults to heaven or hell. And those stuffy gatekeeping assholes up there have _way_ too high of a standard for how “good” you have to be to be _~worthy~_ of joining them. Needless to say, I get stuck with a lot of souls that...I just really don’t think _deserve_ to be punished. So...I offer to make them a demon instead.”

Tord lets out a soft scoff, sitting back in his chair as he crosses his arms over his chest. Todd has _got_ to be kidding. He’s done nothing but fuck with Tord and throw him for loops since the moment he dropped into that office. And now all of a sudden Todd wants him to believe that this offer is an _honor?_ That another chance is somehow something he _deserves?_ But if Todd notices Tord’s dismissal, he doesn’t comment on it, sighing and cleaning his glasses on his overshirt as he continues.

“I told you before, I don’t _go_ to Earth, but I keep track of everything that goes on. And I’ve been watching you in particular for a while. You’re something special, Tord. This Red Army that you’ve made...it’s changed the world in incredible ways. Pride is inherently a sin, yes, but _inspiring_ others like you have is the key force that can change the world. Even if you stay dead, the seeds you’ve planted in those that you’ve inspired will continue to grow.” 

As Todd continues to talk, Tord’s smile fades, his arms loosening until they rest in his lap. Todd is...being _serious?_ Sure, the Red Army had a lot of support, but...it failed. Didn’t it? _He_ failed. Shouldn’t that…

“There’s a _spark_ in your soul, Tord, and the world threw everything it had at you to extinguish it. But even now, even after _death,_ I can still see it in you. If you join me, you’ll be able to do _so much more_ for the world.”

Todd leans forward in his seat as he gets more passionate, the world seeming to blur around them. For a second, Tord gets worried that Todd’s power is somehow melting Hell itself around them, until he blinks...and suddenly, they’re back in the office. He can tell that they’re back in the office - the fluorescent lights are still there, as well as the metal files surrounding them that cover every inch of wall apart from the door - but the desk has transformed from the dull grey cubicle covered in papers to a rich, dark mahogany, completely cleared of clutter. Save for a golden nameplate, a black feather quill with no inkwell in sight…

And a contract.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Lots of worldbuilding to get through, so Chapter 2 ended up a bit uneventful, sorry about that! We'll get into the more exciting parts in Chapter 3, stay tuned!

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first fanfiction, so comments are appreciated! Updates will be posted irregularly, but I'll try to keep a steady schedule.


End file.
